Advisers face additional scrutiny as YFYS oversight grows

Speaking at the recent AFA Conference, Brian Parker, chief economist at Sunsuper, predicted that increasing oversight of multi-asset products could put the onus on advisers as customers up their engagement.

“There is a scope for clients to become a hell of a lot more interested in this,” Mr Parker said.

“There is the potential for clients to ring you up and complain, for example, if they happen to be in a MySuper product that failed the test or if they’re about to be put into a funds product that’s just failed the test, or if they’re not being moved out of a product that has failed… The potential for clients to be very active in this space is very, very real.”

Advisers not using multi-asset products should also be on alert, the economist noted.

With the ATO website tipped to become the “ultimate source of truth” when it comes to performance comparisons, Mr Parker noted this could have several bearings for advisers.

Ultimately, clients may use this handy tool to compare their adviser tailor-made portfolios against multi-asset products.

He said: “A lot of advisers out there may still say, ‘Well, I still don’t need to care, because I don’t use multi-asset products. I actually construct my own client portfolios that are tailored to the needs of my client.’

“That’s fine, but the ATO website is still going to become a benchmark for your clients to potentially compare your performance against. What are you delivering for your clients when compared to the major superannuation funds of Australia?”

Last month, the results of the first annual super performance test revealed a total of 13 funds failed to meet the objective benchmark.

As part of the Your Future, Your Super reforms, the government has mandated a performance test to ensure members are aware of how their fund measures up on key performance metrics. 

The Your Future, Your Super reforms are estimated to save Australian workers $17.9 billion over 10 years.